I think, you pay for what you get, pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
If you look bigger names offerings you can pay anything between 75$ (eMastering) to 400$ (attended sessions) a track.

Also consider how good your product is, as one can not polish a turd and if it's just about getting things to commercial levels, that's something you can easily do yourself even.

Good engineer listens to your track, provides feedback and finds out what you're looking for and then applies unbiased treatment to the track where needed.

Depending on budget one get get a long way himself with Izotope or any other VST based tool. The value of mastering is as much in the 2nd pair of ears, a decent monitoring system, treated room and experience, as it is in esotheric outboard (some mastered tracks don't even touch outboard)

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

Last edited by Raphie on Nov-24-2010 at 15:01

You can often tell a lot about a company by its website. I cannot 'easily' see what gear they have. Straight off the bat that tells me they may be a bit slapdash.

Bit like going into a restaurant that smells of old cooking oil / frying - you can pretty much guarantee a shity dinner.

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A difficult issue.
You can have a studio which wants a lot of money to put the track through their effect chain. And you can have it the other way around.

I can recommend Sonic Art Mastering (www.sonic-art-mastering.com). The engineer behind it is the Hardtrance artist Accuface. I really like his sound, and I used his service for my productions. Sonic Art Mastering gives Mixing feedback if needed before the mastering process to make the final master sound better.
The prices are good as well.

ST Mastering is much cheaper, but that's Price dumping. I don't know how this works, if the mastering is processed individually on the track, and not through preset mastering effect chain.

Cheers,
John

consider this: is your track good? probably not and masterings not gonna help it.

quote:

Originally posted by Kenny Rogers consider this: is your track good? probably not and masterings not gonna help it.

What is it with you guys?!? is it global asshole day or something?!?

No matter what the topic is, you guys jump on all topics like flies on shit. The only thing that you're gonna acomplish is that no one even more cares to open new topics here. because every single topic becomes a "let's piss on TS" topic......

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

Steve Duda (BSOD with deadmau5) on Mastering

quote:

Mastering is a misunderstood concept. Mastering is more important for vinyl pressing than anything. Mastering has validity for vinyl and makes a lot of sense for album continuity if there is a variety of sound/levels/etc between tracks. Over time, however, mastering has became synonymous with "making the track sound better" and has become a crutch for unfinished mixes. A well mixed track (already compressed to taste) is all you should need. People frequently ask who or what we use for mastering and the answer is there is no mastering: you're hearing the render right out of the computer - exactly the same thing we heard...

http://www.soundstosample.com/10_qu...with_Steve_Duda

I do agree with him, personally.

quote:

Originally posted by Raphie What is it with you guys?!? is it global asshole day or something?!? No matter what the topic is, you guys jump on all topics like flies on shit. The only thing that you're gonna acomplish is that no one even more cares to open new topics here. because every single topic becomes a "let's piss on TS" topic......

the threads are already full of piss right from the start because theyre always about mastering or releasing unfinished material, or analog sidechain. alot of people around here needs realitycheck, groundcontrol call it whatever you want, but none of you really should worry about mastering just yet (probably ever). u dont even understand what soundcards are good for, let alone untorrented software so please dont start worry about what is best of software or hardware mastering services when your tracks aint even mixed properly. sorry but it has been too much lately, either you people start putting your act together or im out of here, it has surely turned shit again. luckely most of the WIPs our out lol, that was a sad chapter of TA history.

quote:

Originally posted by Kenny Rogers alot of people around here needs realitycheck

You being one of them. It's quite ironic that the person who posts the most random and incoherent bullshit here is trying to be the voice of reason.





But yeah, you shouldn't worry yourself with mastering, let alone pay for it. If and when you get something signed you can let the label take care of it. Until then it really isn't necessary - just keep practicing those mixing skills as close to perfect as you can, that's far more important.

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quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Mystery You being one of them.

i dont see why.

1. i know i dont need to worry about mastering because my mixing sucks
2. i know i suck
3. i dont care about releasing stuff caus theres no money anyway, and i suck
4. analog is overrated
5. hardware is overrated
6. being "signed" is bullshit
7. software is underrated
8. monitors and soundcards are important

sounds like having my feet on the ground to me. i know i post some random shit for laughs though, probably why no one takes me serious when i am.

You know, maybe its just me? trying to have some serious discussions, be helpful, open. I like the guys like Cryophonik and RANN, you know guys that have experience, still are ambitous and have no ambiguity around them. These are the guys that i come back for.

And then, and you all know who your are, you have the pube trolls, acting childish, swinging around their ePenis in every topic, having nothing to show for, other then from some kind of abused self acclaimed stardom, piss on everything that they consider noob.

Everybody needs to start somewhere, but you guys just keep hyjacking every single thread with your self eTestosteron.

We now have merely 5 new topics a day, because no-one bothers anymore. This is supposed to be a "Producers" foeum, so one can expect noobish questions around sidechaining, mastering, layered basslines, samplerates etc etc.

Members will come and go, but if this attitude continues, the few of you can grow old here, but within a year, there will be no one left for you to piss on. Is that's what you want?

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

atleast im leaving if i see another mastering thread.